This invention is in the technical field of rigid body control of a deformable mirror and more particularly to rigid body control of a deformable mirror with high-bandwidth servo.
It has been known to support a deformable mirror, and more particularly a thin-membrane mirror, by means of many high-stiffness actuators such as PZT actuators, as described, for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 5,037,184 issued Aug. 6, 1991 to Ealey. These many actuators overconstrain the mirror, and overconstrained mirrors have disadvantages for precision control.
Deformable mirrors with low-stiffness force-type actuators for controlling deformation without overconstraint were disclosed by John Hardy (“Active Optics: A New Technology for the Control of Light,” IEEE, Vol. 60, No. 6 (1978)) but high-stiffness kinematic mounts are used for controlling the position in six degrees of freedom. Kinematically constrained deformable mirrors with force actuators require some other means for controlling or adjusting the rigid body position.